There’s a Lot of Fire and a Lot of Ape in This ‘Kong: Skull Island’ Concept Art

Kong’s beats may not be on fire, but his island sure is. A new concept art image from Kong: Skull Island shows the ape bursting through a wall of flames while tiny soldiers run for their lives in the foreground. You can tell the production team liked this one, because it looks like it comes straight out of the actual trailer itself.

It looks like at some point in the film the crew of explorers are going to napalm the living hell out of Skull Island to see what they can rustle up. And that thing will not turn out to be very good news.

Empire also revealed that director Jordan Vogt-Roberts chose to set his film at the height of the Vietnam War instead of back near the era of the original movie. He said that he was originally pitched a film set in 1917, but decided to try his own idea on the production company.

The script I first read took place in 1917. But when I started talking to the Legendary [Entertainment] guys, I was thinking, ‘What weird King Kong movie would I want to see?’ So I pitched them the Vietnam War connection, literally thinking they were gonna laugh me out of the room. And to Legendary’s credit, they said, ‘Cool. Let’s figure it out.’ The aesthetics of that time mixed with King Kong makes for an incredible genre mash-up.

It’s probably a good move, since both the original movie and Peter Jackson’s remake were set in the ’30s. A fresh time period could be just what King Kong needs to rocket the ape back into the spotlight. What this means for the rest of what’s becoming a monster franchise remains to be seen: Godzilla was more or less set in the present day, which means if Kong returns to fight the kaiju he might be considerably older than he’ll be in Skull Island. Or not, because who knows exactly how giant apes age?